How I Screwed Up My Google Acquisition | Hacker News Reader

How I Screwed Up My Google Acquisition

codusoperandi.com

472 pointsjayro103 comments

Prospective acquirers will often pursue potential targets simultaneously and, if they go silent on you, this may have little or nothing to do with whether you followed up diligently or not. In my experience, when an acquiring company wants to move, they know how to do so quickly, at least to engage in sufficient due diligence to see whether they might want to do the deal. Thus, when you do get in a situation where you are getting slow or evasive responses after an initial expression of interest, or where things go silent after an initial set of exchanges, I am not sure there is much you can practically do about it unless you have options to sell to others and use this as a lever to speed the process. You can be as aggressive as you like in such cases but, if the acquirer is simply trying to keep options open, you won't be able to force things absent a credible threat of going elsewhere.

That said, this one may have simply fallen through the cracks owing to the early failures to follow up more aggressively. Only the Google people can know for sure.

Of course, all of this is learned between ages 15 and 30 with the wonderful (and not so wonderful) women we meet :)

Sometimes you're the acquirer, sometimes you're the acquired, and sometimes you're the one sitting there wondering why it went dark :)

There's probably a way to phrase that without implying that HN is a "gentleman's-only" club. (With every romantic interest we entertain?) Or that the learning is limited to the 15-30 age range -- I know people my father's age who are learning some very painful lessons in this department...

Regardless, the point has merit, and in either context you can't win (or even gain the experience you need to win) unless you're in the game. :)

Google only became aware of Zenter at their YC demo day, months after my initial contact with them, and snatched them up very shortly after that.

It does look like apart from building a great product in an exciting space Jay may not have done a bunch of things required for making an acquisition happen. Things like being on the radar of a clearly articulated internal champion in the acquiring company, getting multiple outside sources to recommend the acquisition, getting all the stakeholders on board and committed, getting personal and professional growth arrows of stakeholders aligned, getting a stalking horse to create competition for the acquiring company, etc

One thing I have learnt since joining Google: everyone inside Google is always infernally busy.

I'm British, so my concepts of bothering people, being a nuisance, and being impolite are already vastly out of skew with the American work culture -- I've had to relearn a lot of that behaviour since coming to the USA and Google.

IMO it's not really specifically a Google thing. I think the lesson to be learned from this post (and as a founder, I'm wincing along with you jayro) is simple: when dealing with a big company, keep yourself in the radar or you'll vanish altogether.

But please don't be too crazy or in your face. I administered Summer of Code for our open source project this year, and one very keen applicant kept IMing me for status updates. Unfortunately, he was based in India, and so this meant my phone buzzing at 3am. Suffice it to say (and for mostly unrelated reasons), he didn't get accepted.

Be sensitive, be fresh, be relevant, be interesting.

Suffice it to say (and for mostly unrelated reasons), he didn't get accepted.

Maybe it's more of an American idiom, but usually when we say "suffice it to say", we mean it was for related reasons :)

I was using it more in the sense of "Long story short". I suppose I would usually use it to make a related/contiguous point, but I didn't want to imply that I rejected the application purely because he had woken me up at 3am (which was partly my own fault anyway for forgetting to flip silent mode).

Just like the American "could care less" is the same as the British "couldn't care less". Two nations divided by a common language as someone is supposed to have said.

A better example of phrases that mean different things on either side of the Atlantic is what it means to "table" a proposal. In the US it means "kill it", but in the UK it means "bring it up". If an American says "could care less", they're just being incorrect. ;)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_%28verb%29

My favourite phrase which has radically different meanings for Brits and Americans is "I'm going outside to smoke a fag."

It's not uncommon to hear "Can I bum a fag?", which translates to "Please could I have one of your cigarettes?"

Getting pissed is also a good example, imo

In England that can mean either way, depends entirely on context.

Only because of the importation of the American version via movies/tv.

A pissed american will hit you. A pissed englishman will fall over.

Edit : the correct English term is 'pissed off'. As in 'he pissed me off by going to the pub and getting pissed'.

"could care less" is a shortening of "could not care less", and the latter phrase is correct. the words themselves don't mean anything any more, it's a stock phrase.

i think the sentiment is, "I care so little that I don't even want to use all the words needed to say how little I care".

"could care less" is actually wrong -- it literally means that you do actually care about the thing in question.

Being wrong doesn't stop people using it.

They could care less if it's wrong ;p

You are correct, of course. It is so frustrating that I've justified it for the incorrect as a shortening of:

I could (exhibit that I) care less (because I do care less than I currently exhibit).

Or, as a matter of giving the benefit of the doubt:

I could (exhibit that I) care less (because I am, through effort, caring more right now than I would naturally).

How about, "I care so little that I can't even be bothered to properly pronounce that I couldn't care less."

"I could care less" is actually sarcasm which implicates that caring is obviously unlikely.

Both statements display a stronger degree of uncaring than "I couldn't care less" which is actually a pretty boring and to the point statement. Therefore I find "I could care less" to be the clear winner to indicate how little I actually care.

In summary, "I could care less".

Seems to me you care quite a lot!

More than you know!

Devil's advocate: "I care very very little right now, but if you keep bugging me about it, I could care less, if you like."

or:

"I care very very little right now, but there's nothing holding me back from caring even less than that."

The common use of "nonplussed" means exactly the opposite of the intended meaning. It may be wrong, but it's generally understandable in context. I'd argue "could care less" works the same way.

You're not wrong. It's totally understandable within context.

Bill: "Hey Ted, check out my fancy landing / lead acquisition page for a product that doesn't exist yet".

Ted: "I could care less"

Bill: "Hold up a minute there chief. Are you saying that you do care? I'm so confused..."

I'm not sure what you're referring to; I don't know anybody that uses "could care less".

I would love that to be the case, but that idiom pops up all the time in my parts (LA area).

Most recently it showed up in the dialogue for Disney's Tangled and not even in a self-aware way. Ugh.

Everything I read seems to have it that way. It makes no sense, it confuses and infuriates me.

Judging from the sibling responses, it would appear that I live a grammatically sheltered life.

I envy you.

Really? I seem to see it a lot, a regional idiom perhaps? However, the "table" example is much better.

It could be a regional idiom, like "ain't" or "y'all". I'm in the southwest, it seems like people mostly use "news english".

At the very least, you just said it. If this counts as "saying." Jeesh.

You have a good point- but I really don't agree with your IM/phone etiquette. If you don't want to be woken up at 3am, then have your phone on alarm-only or don't have the IM go to your phone.

Oh yes, it was partly my fault for leaving my phone on non-silent mode, but that doesn't sound half as good in a story.

Another one I learned that pops up in this tale: get on the plane if the meeting is important.

Telling your counterparty that you're about to get on a plane to meet them is one way to qualify a deal: they may tell you not to.

A bizdev friend of mine taught me another: reschedule a call to a Saturday (make up a reason). If it's a serious deal... like, "you're going to be Powerpoint in our office suite"... they'll bitch, but do it.

Sometimes these things are about followup, but a lot of times they're really about qualification; they may just not be into you. It can be important to know that if you're otherwise going to spin your wheels.

Telling your counterparty that you're about to get on a plane to meet them is one way to qualify a deal: they may tell you not to.

Ah, again we see the parallels with dating?

(I did very nearly do this once.)

The trick is often to not make it a choice.

"I'll be in town after visiting a customer on Friday, can we get together?" is much more likely to have a positive response than "should I fly out to meet with you on Friday?". If the meeting is very important to you (high EV, even if maybe low odds?), it's sometimes worth not making it clear how important.

In other cases, being willing to make what seem like big sacrifices (getting a plane the next hour, changing your flight plans, driving cross-country, etc.) will help your case, if known.

The parallels with dating are very apparent.

That was my first thought. If you get a call from these guys, you tell them "I'll be in town next week, when would you like to meet for 20 minutes?"

Yep. Some things have to be done face to face.

The book The Art of Possibility has a good chapter about this. It's also a great book in general; it's Rosamund & Ben Zander's philosophy of life disguised as a self-help book, in the same way that The Black Swan is basically Taleb's ideas about epistemology disguised as investment advice. The ideas aren't super unique, but they do a better job selling them than I've seen anywhere else.

Hell, I'd say more than some. It seems to me that real business gets done on the phone and in person, much more than anywhere else in the digital realm (email, social media, etc). If someone isn't willing to take your call, then they probably aren't serious enough. If they aren't willing to meet face to face, then it's more of the same.

Yeah, we were trying to coordinate that. Jonathan was anxious to get me up there and thought I'd be a big hit with the Writely guys who he seemed to hold in very high regard. But he had to fly back to New York (we were in SF at the time for the conference), then he had some other trip and then it just got complicated. That's why he just decided to pass me up the ladder, but in the end that clearly didn't work to my advantage.

I think Josh's point was to not wait for them to fly you out, but to fly out yourself. As rokhayakebe noted, say you'll be in town in two weeks and set up a meeting. Perhaps Google has streamlined the process to fly you out, but it still isn't as easy as "Great, check in at the front desk on Wednesday at 2PM". If meeting is a much bigger deal to you than who you're meeting with you need to do what you can to make it easy for who you're meeting with.

I do agree with Josh's advice (not that I considered anything like that at the time), but just to clarify, Jonathan was in New York with the rest of the Google Spreadsheet team, was due to fly somewhere else (I think it may have been Europe) and felt it was important to meet at the Googleplex in Mountain View with the Writely team. I don't think I could have showed up in Mountain View without him being there since he was the champion of the acquisition, and the decision makers weren't in New York so it probably wouldn't have helped much for me to fly there. Obviously, none of this matters now, but I just wanted to explain that the logistics weren't quite so simple.

That said if you want to make something happen then you make it happen and I didn't. Fail.

People want to see a sufficient level of excitement. Maybe you should have headed to New York.

I blew a deal like this once, myself. When I was in NYC, a big SV fund wanted to invest in Delicious, but I didn't bother to get on a plane and go visit them after several hits; I just kinda expected them to send me a term sheet without ever meeting me! Pretty stupid. Luckily I later met Fred and company.

PS It's Joshua, not Josh

A great read about politeness (though it had some negotiating impacts) causing a missed opportunity. I too err on the side of politeness when it comes to business interactions and I've learned that more often than not, when I'm dealing with someone remotely whether it be a colleague or a point of contact, that the squeaky wheel gets the oil.

I think it was a mistake to let it ride for so long. A few weeks, maybe two months, and I would have called them up and followed up. Even a short email positioning myself as asking more out of curiosity than need for an acquisition, etc.

Anyone else agree? Would you have followed up?

Yes, in retrospect I was stupid not to at least have sent a short email or two. Honestly, I look back and wonder what the hell I was thinking.

If it's any measure of consolation, your openness in being willing to admit and discuss this is inspiring.

I just wish I could be inspiring in some other way. ;) But thank you for that.

It sounds to me like the Writely engineer who called you didn't know why he was meant to call.

That would have set of very loud alarm bells for me. What did you think at the time?!

My natural tendency would be towards patience, I think, so I would be in danger of letting things slide. Realizing that, though, I'd be in a position to do something about it. If the goal is to keep your name on the radar, it seems like you just need to get something into the contact's inbox. What about a note detailing new features or improvements you'd implemented in the past week or two? It could be a way to indicate continued interest without feeling like you're badgering. Hopefully the contact would reply and provide some insight into the progress. If not, a more direct approach would probably be warranted.

"...get something into the contact's inbox" -- yes, this. You can avoid sitting and waiting without being rude or pushy either.

With a little creativity, there's usually a way to keep communication open without seeming rude by asking again about whatever it is you actually want to know.

Ideally, something that prompts a short reply -- ending with a simple yes/no question, for example -- so that they will actively respond to you, and feel some obligation to also give you a short update on The Big Thing.

You can also amiably pester someone repeatedly by giving them a new reason for the new request.

If you're communicating with someone very busy, also be very sure to make any email message as simple and terse as you can.

Agreed. As a starter upper, I'm always the little guy who's chasing the bigger guy (investor, client). I try not to be pushy, but if 1-2 weeks go by, I'll write a friendly what's up email and that usually works.

Presumably Google was looking to speed up time to market.

If the acquisition process takes too long, they are not saving time (they could have coded it internally) and they have plenty of engineers already.

sending regular (say once in 2-3 weeks) updates about the company could be a good way of staying on the radar

There was a no-holds-barred discussion of the realities of being acquired by s soulless megacorp at Business of Software 2010, by Eric Sink, who sold a product to MS. He had a similar hot cold hot cold reception, and the deal was totally dead twice, prior to it working out. It appears to be the nature of the beast.

If BOS publishes the video of that, I'll post it -- it was one of the most eyeopening talks at the conference for me (and that is saying something, since they were virtually without exception outstanding).

P.S. Google is a soulless megacorp with above average PR.

Preezo sounds like it was built to be acquired from day one. I think that mindset makes it a lot more difficult to deal with missed opportunities and can really make the entire experience of building a product unenjoyable. This is probably why so many people suggest building something you want instead of what you think others will want; at least you can enjoy the fruits of your labor in the process.

You're absolutely correct. I started to write about my lessons learned and "don't build to flip" was one of them, but the article started to get a bit long. I'll summarize the lessons learned from Preezo in another article as there are a lot ... unfortunately. ;)

And because building something people want instead of what you think some company wants makes you less dependent on a lottery and more dependent on your own skills.

That's why I'm building Appignite now. It's something I want for myself and I know it's something other people need. I'll definitely talk in-depth about that in my "Lessons Learned from Preezo" post. Stay tuned. ;)

Definitely a frustrating story to read. That said, two things stand out:

1) Deals fall through. PG et all write about this all the time. It's probably easy to figure why they fail in hindsight, but that doesn't make them any easier to manage in the future.

2) It seems like the main premise of the idea was to get bought by google/yahoo/microsoft. That is a dangerous strategy to employ out of the gates (although back in 2005 there was no hacker news and a whole let less general knowledge about the black art of startups).

The "get on a plane" advice is crucial. Product managers lead acquisitions at Google and are the hardest to reach. If you get any interest expressed from them, try to get in person w/ them within a couple weeks max, even if just for coffee. From there, it's helpful to send them a monthly or bi-monthly ping just to keep them abreast of any developments. They might not be ready to acquire now, but it's very helpful to remind them of you when they're ready or thinking of an acquisition

*disclaimer - ex-Google PM

I think the moral here applies to more than just dealing with big companies, but anything in general. Persistence can pay off big time.

Quick example: I interviewed with a company back in August and was told I'd hear from them in a week. I didn't so I began emailing the CEO (who I'd interviewed with) at least once a week for almost three months (never got a yes/no, so I kept "checking in"). Because I kept myself on the radar and kept pursuing it, when something finally opened up, I got the job and was told that they admired my persistence. Don't be afraid of annoying people -- if the answer isn't final yet, keep trying.

A somewhat similar story: around the same time I was working on Numbler, a collaborative spreadsheet that I launched (unluckily) a couple of months before google spreadsheet went live. Numbler had some cool features that would enable you to see real time changes from other collaborators, see dynamic updates when someone else changed cell formulas, integration with internet data sources, etc.

I got the attention of Google and was flown into NYC for an interview / talk with the spreadsheet team. Similarly, I was also a one man shop since my founder had bailed on me and left for Google 3 months prior! Things went pear shaped when I failed to get through the algorithm gristmill. I had one poor interview with a beaver/rat ringed kid who was eager to demonstrate his intellectual superiority (or so it felt at the time).

The frustrating part is that as an entrepreneur your thoughts are ranging from how to make money/business model to UI design to backend engineering. I was expecting that the googlers would at least show some interest in Numbler - but that wasn't how the meetings were structured. The google PM (Fuzzy was his name) was interested, but seemed hamstrung by the google process. Google never asked me about any of the tricks I used work to build the UI, COMET style networking for responsiveness, etc.

In retrospect, Numbler was an acquisition play and needed a much better strategy and larger vision to succeed. I did end up with a google NYC t-shirt...

Yeah, I remember Numbler! It sounds like a very similar story except that you just got a little further down the road. If you'd be willing to tell it in more detail it would be fun to interview you on the podcast I co-host - TechZing (www.techzinglive.com). If you think you might be interested then please send me an email.

I don't have any relevant experience, but this sounds odd. If the product was good (better than Zenter), than why didn't they acquire Preezo at that later point in time?

I think (and this is just speculation) that they may have already developed a lot of similar technology in-house in addition to the Zenter acquisition. By the time I got around to contacting them again they probably just didn't need it anymore.

I (a UK developer) just dealt with a company who were interested in my Pretext software, which finds text in images. I rang at 2PM their time when I rang, and when his development committee finally rejected me after a month of waiting, he said "You have written very capable and useful software - however, we want to develop in-house", I was polite and said goodbye, etc.

Everything to gain. Nothing lost but a couple transatlantic phone calls.

You should ping them again once some time has passed, just to inquire as to how things are going. It will only take you a moment, and there's a non-zero chance they may have grappled with the problem enough to have changed their mind and be eager to speak with you.

I didnt realise there was a market for that sort of software. I wrote a pile of it some time ago for my thesis and never did anything with it. Perhaps I should dust it off like you and try selling it.

Which Skype makes local.

It also says something about the randomness of the startup scene. You can have just the right product at just the right time and still lose.

I gotta say hearing about things not going one's way is more informative and educational than hearing about when things all go peachy and a founder walks out with $X million. If you only read TC you'd think every startup in the world is cashing in.

This has inspired me to send some follow up emails on some leads I've been chasing, thanks!

Yes, do that! I now send status check emails to all of my consulting clients and prospects with great regularity.

Be careful. I can't find the link but one survey found out that the #1 reason why a deal didn't go through was because salesperson was too aggressive.

Jonathan Rochelle repeated wryly and with a smile, "Yes, time to go. Google is here,"

WTF? Is Google the mob or something? Almost seems like the next line should have been, "And I was never seen or heard from again."

No, Jonathan Rochelle was a really nice guy. I think he just knew that that demo was going to be a big deal for me and that it was probably something I had been hoping and waiting for. He was right.

No, I didn't mean to imply that he wasn't. Just the phrasing seemed particularly sinister, although certainly unintentional, but still funny... at least to me.

I read it in a condescending tone like "Yes, the big boys are here, time to do your dog and pony show"

The lesson for me here is that even if Barack Obama or Bill Gates approaches you - you should act calmly and politely (and alertly as inner state) but as if you know or presume nothing of the opposite side's intentions, power, possible usefulness to you, etc.

Some kind of mental aikido stance combined with polite poker face that seems to leave off the initiative of first action but disarms the other side of certain ways to influence you.

Seems to me that your analysis suffers from a fundamental attribution error (blaming you rather than circumstances). While it is possible that you could have done a few things better (with the help of the ever so omni-potent captain hindsight), my experience is that such deals are complicated and involve a lot of people. So I think it is much more likely that the final outcome was more out of your control than your essay implies.

He can't influence the part that was out of his control, though, while he could indeed have influenced the part that was in his control: Give them a call when you haven't heard from them in a month. Even though that obviously doesn't make the acquisition a certainty (obviously), it's doing the best you could do at the time, so you don't have to kick yourself over it later.

In short, if he had called them, the post would be "Google moved to acquire me, but it fell through. The end."

I know I've had experiences in life where I look back and say 'what was I thinking?!?'

As difficult as it is, nicely done on recognizing the situation, holding yourself accountable and chalking it up as a lesson learned. No doubt about it, this experience will help you somewhere down the line...

I'm really impressed with your articulate re-cap of the story.

Thanks, I really do appreciate that. It was more difficult than I thought to actually write the story down once and for all. I'm still sitting here wondering what my mental block was at the time because it's not like I'm at all introverted or uncomfortable contacting people. Hell, listen to my podcast (TechZing) all I do is run my mouth. ;) Maybe the insight will come to me after some deep thinking or maybe even some regression hypnosis and I'll write a follow up. The post will have to be entitled something like - The Real Reason I Completely Choked. Ugh. ;)

I would say the problem is that you divulged technical details before getting a written "intent to acquire" from google.

While keeping the line of communication is important, it's also important to ensure it's worth your time.

not sure why there's downvotes, maybe I worded the above too strongly.

He clearly mentions how he discusses how he routed around browser editing/DOM manipulation to Google, and then a similar approach was taken by Google later in their product.

That same approach has been taken by a number of people, including Zenter. Most ideas of that sort aren't novel, just difficult.

This thought often goes through my mind when people ask me "how did you do that?" If they were Google, and interested in acquiring me, I would be less guarded in answering the question though. Companies would get a pretty bad reputation very quickly if they were in the business of stealing peoples' ideas.

Android phones, App Store, and, oh yeah, check out the industrial design of that Netbook they came out with. And those are the flat out rip-offs...

Google is not all about stealing ideas, but they certainly will if it benefits them. They are probably going to end up taking the crown from Microsoft for mediocre implementations of others good ideas, just by virtue of their size (and still growing) and their reach.

Man, that royally sucks. I can't add too much to the conversation except to say that I hope your AppIgnite system works out to be a nice hit. I heard you on some podcast recently and it sounds pretty neat.

Thanks for that. I'm trying to apply a lot of the lessons I learned from Preezo and I think it's going to make the difference. Also, I think have a good blog post brewing on the subject, so stay tuned. ;)

I used to work at OT when Glazer was there, and I attended a workshop once where he gave a talk. Very impressive guy -- I remember thinking "I want to work for the company that guy's working for!"

I agree. He seemed like a very friendly and intelligent guy when we spoke on the phone. The same goes for Jonathan Rochelle.

It would be rather interesting if the google folks involved in this could provide their side of the story. Just wishful thinking of course...but maybe someone from HN could try asking the question...

Comment from my friend, Jason Snell (@syn3):

"Ouch. That really sucks. Lesson learned. Sometimes you have to take off your engineer hat and stop pretending human communication works like TCP."

"ALWAYS BE CLOSING"

I know one of the Zenter guys. He is definitely a closer.

considering that Google's acquisitions are about about technology as much as about talent, and the fact that you hired another guy to help you with coding it is possible that they expected a team behind the technology to join them, but were disappointed when learned that you hired outsiders to help with building that technology.

This should also be a lesson about using engineering notebooks and other such legal documents in programming a new product, especially with new ideas such as the DOM manipulation indicated in this blog.

Jeeze - DOM manipulation is not the newest idea in the world, and not everything created has to be patented, what's wrong with you people?

I don't think you "screwed" anything. You can't force a relationship, and it is a waste of time to think about the email you didn't send. Had you sent it and got no reply, would you feel better? How about the email they didn't send? Maybe they are the ones who "screwed"?

"Still what could've been. Is better than what could never be at all" -- Tiffany http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LzGss9QGAk

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